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Starvoid dev diary #9 - The Battle for Makami Desert

A little out of synch will all things going on – but here's a new dev diary! Just for you!

This week I will get down to business with one of the game's maps and one of the game modes – and how they work together. The game map is Makami Desert, and the game mode is Battle.

Makami Desert
The Planet of Tartarus IV is located in a remote star system in the outer edge of the Rim. It is an habitable planet that might even appear pleasant to live on from time to time. But staying on he planets surface is something one have to to at one's own risk. The air is extremely hot and dry, killing a human being by dehydration in the matter of an hour or two and scorching sulfur mixed sandstorms torment the planet's surface and can appear from nowhere, offering a quick and unpleasant death to anyone caught within it without the right protection.

Of course this planet has lots of Starvoid hidden below it's red surface. And this is exactly why the planet is of such a huge interest to Starvoid mining corporations – and in extent also to Commanders who are well rewarded for every Starvoid Extraction Point they manage to secure.

One of the Starvoid richest areas of the planet is the vast Makami Desert. Once upon a time colonists tried to inhabit the area around the larger Starvoid deposits, but the environmental hazards proved to be worse then expected and the colonies were soon abandoned, leaving nothing but ghost towns and untouched resource behind.

Kelly capturing an Extraction Point in the Makami Desert.
Click to enlarge.

Battle
Starvoid currently has three game modes; Battle, Team Death Match and Sabotage. I will not go into any details about the latter two right now.

In Battle there are several Extraction Points, or EP:s, scattered across the maps. These are important deposit points for the valuable resource Starvoid, which you as a mercenary commander is here to secure. The EP:s are captured by the players' commanders, and when captured a corporate Extractor will be automatically deployed onto the EP. These Extractors will generate score for your team until destroyed by the enemy team. The team with most score when the match time runs out is victorious. A team can also win prematurely by capturing all EP:s on the map.

To make combat a bit more focused, the EP:s must also be captured in a certain pattern, where the EP:s are divided into three rows; one close, one center and one far (in the perspective of your base). To secure any EP:s in the center row on a map, your team must first control all EP:s in the row closest to your base, and to secure any of the EP:s in the far row, your team must control all EP:s in the center row. Extractors in secured territory, ie. in a row behind a row that your team control, are made invulnerable to enemy attacks, drawing the attention to where the combat is at.

To spice it up, there are also a few Bonus Drop Zones, or DZ:s, on each map. These are represented in all game modes. Onto these, a bonus package will be dropped every few minutes, giving the team that captures it one of several different global bonuses that can turn the tide of battle in the team's favor.

The Battle for Makami Desert
This is an overview of the Makami Desert map in the Battle game mode:

Battle on Makami Desert. Click to enlarge.

The blue and red highlights show the two team's bases. The green objective markers are the Extraction Points and the orange objective markers are Bonus Drop Zones. The Blue-Yellow-Red field represent the different rows of EP:s – one full row has to be captured before the team can start capturing the next row. If the two EP:s closest to a team's base are captured by the enemy team, this means that the enemy team has captured all EP:s and will win on domination.

And that's all for this dev diary guys and gals. Thanks for reading, and take care!
-
Rasmus Davidsson, Game Director at Starvoid